Postcards from Travel Near and Far by Jia-Rui

92310, Goldstone

I had to be at the Goldstone Deep Space Network complex by 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, so I got up at 3:30. It felt god-awful to be getting up when some significant portion of L.A. was just drunkenly stumbling into bed. On the freeway, I noticed considerably more cars at 5 a.m. compared to 4 a.m. The only consolation was seeing a ponderous yellow harvest moon setting in the west over the Mojave Desert as the sun rose in the east. By the time I arrived at the 70-meter-wide Mars antenna site, the edges of the antenna were beginning to bask in that golden California light. This visit, I actually climbed up to the apex of the giant antenna. It wasn’t for the faint of heart — the metal that makes up the dish is actually perforated with tiny holes and you can see the ground beneath your feet, some 100 feet below. I also crawled to the edge of the antenna, peered over and quickly crawled back. A stiff breeze blew as birds perched on the antenna and chirped. I could almost make out the strains of Peer Gynt playing on a perfect desert morning.

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I'm a journalist based in Los Angeles who has always said that writing postcards for a living would be a dream job. The posts -- short enough to fit on an actual postcard -- chronicle recent travels near and far. I could blab on about being inspired by epistolary novels, the short poems of Emily Dickinson, and the New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" pieces, but I'll just say that I'm aiming to give you a sense of flavor of a place without boring you to death. Wish you were here!